Wednesday, 7 December 2016

We Might Live in the Computer Program, but It May Not Matter

We Might Live in the Computer Program, but It May Not
Matter

By Philip
Ball

Are you
real? What about me?
These used to be questions that only philosophers worried about. Scientists
just got on with figuring out how the world is, and why. But some of the
current best guesses about how the world is seem to leave the question hanging
over science too.

Several
physicists, cosmologists and technologists are now happy to entertain the idea
that we are all living inside a gigantic computer simulation, experiencing a
Matrix-style virtual world that we mistakenly think is real.

Our
instincts rebel, of course. It all feels too real to be a simulation. The
weight of the cup in my hand, the rich aroma of the coffee it contains, the
sounds all around me – how can such richness of experience be faked?

But then
consider the extraordinary progress in computer and information technologies
over the past few decades. Computers have given us games of uncanny realism –
with autonomous characters responding to our choices – as well as
virtual-reality simulators of tremendous persuasive power.
It is enough to make you paranoid.

The Matrix
formulated the narrative with unprecedented clarity. In that story, humans are
locked by a malignant power into a virtual world that they accept
unquestioningly as “real”. But the science-fiction nightmare of being trapped
in a universe manufactured within our minds can be traced back further, for
instance to David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil
(1985).

Over all
these dystopian visions, there loom two questions. How would we know? And would
it matter anyway?

The idea
that we live in a simulation has some high-profile advocates.
In June 2016, technology entrepreneur Elon Musk asserted that the odds are “a
billion to one” against us living in “base reality”.
Similarly, Google’s machine-intelligence guru Ray Kurzweil has suggested that
“maybe our whole universe is a science experiment of some junior high-school
student in another universe”.

What’s more,
some physicists are willing to entertain the possibility. In April 2016,
several of them debated the issue at the American Museum of Natural History in
New York, US.

None of
these people are proposing that we are physical beings held in some gloopy vat
and wired up to believe in the world around us, as in The Matrix.
Instead, there are at least two other ways that the Universe around us might
not be the real one.

Cosmologist
Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US has suggested that
our entire Universe might be real yet still a kind of lab experiment. The idea
is that our Universe was created by some super-intelligence, much as biologists
breed colonies of micro-organisms.

There is
nothing in principle that rules out the possibility of manufacturing a universe
in an artificial Big Bang, filled with real matter and energy, says Guth.

Nor would it
destroy the universe in which it was made. The new universe would create its
own bubble of space-time, separate from that in which it was hatched. This
bubble would quickly pinch off from the parent universe and lose contact with
it.

This
scenario does not then really change anything. Our Universe might have been born
in some super-beings’ equivalent of a test tube, but it is just as physically
“real” as if it had been born “naturally”.

However,
there is a second scenario. It is this one that has garnered all the attention,
because it seems to undermine our very concept of reality.

Musk and
other like-minded folk are suggesting that we are entirely simulated beings. We
could be nothing more than strings of information manipulated in some gigantic
computer, like the characters in a video game.

Even our
brains are simulated, and are responding to simulated sensory inputs.

In this view,
there is no Matrix to “escape from”. This is where we live, and is our only
chance of “living” at all.

But why
believe in such a baroque possibility? The argument is quite simple: we already
make simulations, and with better technology it should be possible to create
the ultimate one, with conscious agents that experience it as totally lifelike.

We carry out
computer simulations not just in games but in research. Scientists try to
simulate aspects of the world at levels ranging from the subatomic to entire
societies or galaxies, even whole universes.

For example,
computer simulations of animals may tell us how they develop complex behaviours
like flocking and swarming. Other simulations help us understand how planets,
stars and galaxies form.

We can also
simulate human societies using rather simple “agents” that make choices
according to certain rules. These give us insights into how cooperation
appears, how cities evolve, how road traffic and economies function, and much
else.

These
simulations are getting ever more complex as computer power expands. Already,
some simulations of human behaviour try to build in rough descriptions of
cognition. Researchers envisage a time, not far away, when these agents’
decision-making will not come from simple “if…then…” rules. Instead, they will
give the agents simplified models of the brain and see how they respond.

Who is to
say that before long we will not be able to create computational agents –
virtual beings – that show signs of consciousness? Advances in understanding
and mapping the brain, as well as the vast computational resources promised by
quantum computing, make this more likely by the day.

If we ever
reach that stage, we will be running huge numbers of simulations. They will
vastly outnumber the one “real” world around us.

Is it not
likely, then, that some other intelligence elsewhere in the Universe has
already reached that point?

If so, it
makes sense for any conscious beings like ourselves to assume that we are
actually in such a simulation, and not in the one world from which the virtual
realities are run. The probability is just so much greater.

Are
we all just a computer simulation? (Credit: Andrzej Wojcicki/Science Photo
Library)

Philosopher
Nick Bostrom of the University of Oxford in the UK has broken down this
scenario into three possibilities. As he puts it, either:

1.Intelligent
civilisations never get to the stage where they can make such simulations,
perhaps because they wipe themselves out first; or

2.They
get to that point, but then choose for some reason not to conduct such
simulations; or

Astrophysicist
and Nobel laureate George Smoot has argued that there is no compelling reason
to believe 1
or 2.

Sure,
humanity is causing itself plenty of problems at the moment, what with climate
change, nuclear weapons and a looming mass extinction. But these problems need
not be terminal.

What’s more,
there is nothing to suggest that truly detailed simulations, in which the
agents experience themselves as real and free, are impossible in principle.
Smoot adds that, given how widespread we now know other planets to be (with
another Earth-like one right on our cosmic doorstep), it would be the height of
arrogance to assume that we are the most advanced intelligence in the entire Universe.

What about
option 2?
Conceivably, we might desist from making such simulations for ethical reasons.
Perhaps it would seem improper to create simulated beings that believe they
exist and have autonomy.

But that too
seems unlikely, Smoot says. After all, one key reason we conduct simulations
today is to find out more about the real world. This can help us make the world
better and save lives. So there are sound ethical reasons for doing it.

That seems
to leave us with option 3:
we are probably in a simulation.

But this is
all just supposition. Could we find any evidence?

Many
researchers believe that depends on how good the simulation is. The best way
would be to search for flaws in the program, just like the glitches that betray
the artificial nature of the “ordinary world” in The Matrix. For instance, we
might discover inconsistencies in the laws of physics.

Alternatively,
the late artificial-intelligence maven Marvin Minsky has suggested that there
might be giveaway errors due to “rounding off” approximations in the
computation. For example, whenever an event has several possible outcomes,
their probabilities should add up to 1. If we found that they did not, that
would suggest something was amiss.

Some
scientists argue that there are already good reasons to think we are inside a
simulation. One is the fact that our Universe looks designed.
The constants of nature, such as the strengths of the fundamental forces, have
values that look fine-tuned to make life possible. Even small alterations would
mean that atoms were no longer stable, or that stars could not form. Why this
is so is one of the deepest mysteries in cosmology.

One possible
answer invokes the “multiverse”. Maybe there is a plethora of universes, all
created in Big Bang-type events and all with different laws of physics. By
chance, some of them would be fine-tuned for life – and if we were not in such
a hospitable universe, we would not ask the fine-tuning question because we
would not exist.

However,
parallel universes are a pretty speculative idea. So it is at least conceivable
that our Universe is instead a simulation whose parameters have been fine-tuned
to give interesting results, like stars, galaxies and people.

While this
is possible, the reasoning does not get us anywhere. After all, presumably the
“real” Universe of our creators must also be fine-tuned for them to exist. In
that case, positing that we are in a simulation does not explain the
fine-tuning mystery.

Others have
pointed to some of the truly weird findings of modern physics as evidence that
there is something amiss.

The
Universe works like mathematics (Credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library)

Quantum
mechanics, the theory of the very small, has thrown up all sorts of odd things.
For instance, both matter and energy seem to be granular. What’s more, there
are limits to the resolution with which we can observe the Universe, and if we
try to study anything smaller, things just look “fuzzy”.
Smoot says these perplexing features of quantum physics are just what we would
expect in a simulation. They are like the pixellation of a screen when you look
too closely.

However,
that is just a rough analogy. It is beginning to look as though the quantum
graininess of nature might not be really so fundamental, but is a consequence
of deeper principles about the extent to which reality is knowable.

A second
argument is that the Universe appears to run on mathematical lines, just as you
would expect from a computer program. Ultimately, say some physicists, reality
might be nothing but mathematics.

At
its root the Universe may be mathematics (Credit: Sputnik/Science Photo
Library)

Max Tegmark
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argues that this is just what we
would expect if the laws of physics were based on a computational algorithm.

However,
that argument seems rather circular. For one thing, if some super-intelligence
were running simulations of their own “real” world, they could be expected to
base its physical principles on those in their own universe, just as we do. In
that case, the reason our world is mathematical would not be because it runs on
a computer, but because the “real” world is also that way.

Conversely,
simulations would not have to be based on mathematical rules. They could be set
up, for example, to work randomly. Whether that would result in any coherent
outcomes is not clear, but the point is that we cannot use the apparently
mathematical nature of the Universe to deduce anything about its “reality”.

However,
based on his own research in fundamental physics, James Gates of the University
of Maryland thinks there is a more specific reason for suspecting that the laws
of physics are dictated by a computer simulation.

Gates
studies matter at the level of subatomic particles like quarks, the
constituents of protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus. He says the rules
governing these particles’ behaviour turn out to have features that resemble
the codes that correct for errors in manipulating data in computers. So perhaps
those rules really are computer codes?

Maybe. Or
maybe interpreting these physical laws as error-correcting codes is just the
latest example of the way we have always interpreted nature on the basis of our
advanced technologies.

At one time
Newtonian mechanics seemed to make the universe a clockwork mechanism, and more
recently genetics was seen – at the dawn of the computer age – as a kind of
digital code with storage and readout functions. We might just be superimposing
our current preoccupations onto the laws of physics.

It is likely
to be profoundly difficult if not impossible to find strong evidence that we
are in a simulation. Unless the simulation was really rather error-strewn, it
will be hard to design a test for which the results could not be explained in
some other way.

We might
never know, says Smoot, simply because our minds would not be up to the task.
After all, you design your agents in a simulation to function within the rules
of the game, not to subvert them. This might be a box we cannot think outside
of.

There is,
however, a more profound reason why perhaps we should not get too worried by
the idea that we are just information being manipulated in a vast computation.
Because that is what some physicists think the “real” world is like anyway.

Quantum
theory itself is increasingly being couched in terms of information and
computation. Some physicists feel that, at its most fundamental level, nature
might not be pure mathematics but pure information: bits, like the ones and
zeros of computers. The influential theoretical physicist John Wheeler dubbed
this notion “It From Bit”.

In this
view, everything that happens, from the interactions of fundamental particles
upwards, is a kind of computation.

“The
Universe can be regarded as a giant quantum computer,” says Seth Lloyd of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If one looks at the ‘guts’ of the
Universe – the structure of matter at its smallest scale – then those guts
consist of nothing more than [quantum] bits undergoing local, digital
operations.”

This gets to
the nub of the matter. If reality is just information, then we are no more or
less “real” if we are in a simulation or not. In either case, information is
all we can be.

Does it make
a difference if that information were programmed by nature or by super-intelligent
creators? It is not obvious why it should – except that, in the latter case,
presumably our creators could in principle intervene in the simulation, or even
switch it off. How should we feel about that?

The
quantum world is fuzzy and undetermined (Credit: Richard Kail/Science Photo
Library)

Tegmark,
mindful of this possibility, has recommended that we had all better go out and
do interesting things with our lives, just in case our simulators get bored.

I think this
is said at least half in jest. After all, there are surely better reasons to
want to lead interesting lives than that they might otherwise be erased. But it
inadvertently betrays some of the problems with the whole concept.

The idea of
super-intelligent simulators saying “Ah look, this run is a bit dull – let’s
stop it and start another” is comically anthropomorphic. Like Kurzweil’s
comment about a school project, it imagines our “creators” as fickle teenagers
with Xboxes.

The
discussion of Bostrom’s three possibilities involves a similar kind of
solipsism. It is an attempt to say something profound about the Universe by
extrapolating from what humans in the 21st Century are up to. The argument
boils down to: “We make computer games. I bet super-beings would too, only
they’d be awesome!”

In trying to
imagine what super-intelligent beings might do, or even what they would consist
of, we have little choice but to start from ourselves. But that should not
obscure the fact that we are then spinning webs from a thread of ignorance.

It is surely
no coincidence that many advocates of the “universal simulation” idea attest to
being avid science-fiction fans in their youth. This might have inspired them
to imagine futures and alien intelligences, but it may also have predisposed
them to cast such imaginings in human terms: to see the cosmos through the
windows of the Starship Enterprise.

Our
Universe can be thought of as a quantum computer (Credit: Harald Ritsch/Science
Photo Library)

Perhaps
mindful of such limitations, Harvard physicist Lisa Randall is puzzled by the
enthusiasm some of her colleagues show for these speculations about cosmic
simulation. For her they change nothing about how we should see and investigate
the world. Her bafflement is not just a “so what”: it is a question of what we
choose to understand by “reality”.

Almost
certainly, Elon Musk does not go around telling himself that the people he sees
around him, and his friends and family, are just computer constructs created by
streams of data entering the computational nodes that encode his own
consciousness.

Partly, he
does not do so because it is impossible to hold that image in our heads for any
sustained length of time. But more to the point, it is because we know deep
down that the only notion of reality worth having is the one we experience, and
not some hypothetical world “behind” it.

There is,
however, nothing new about asking what is “behind” the appearances and
sensations we experience. Philosophers have been doing so for centuries.

The
quantum world is counter-intuitive (Credit: Mike Agliolo/Science Photo Library)

Plato
wondered if what we perceive as reality is like the shadows projected onto the
walls of a cave. Immanuel Kant asserted that, while there might be some “thing
in itself” that underlies the appearances we perceive, we can never know it.
René Descartes accepted, in his famous one-liner “I think therefore I am”, that
the capacity to think is the only meaningful criterion of existence we can
attest.

The concept of
“the world as simulation” takes that old philosophical saw and clothes it in
the garb of our latest technologies. There is no harm in that. Like many
philosophical conundrums, it impels us to examine our assumptions and
preconceptions.

But until
you can show that drawing distinctions between what we experience and what is
“real” leads to demonstrable differences in what we might observe or do, it
does not change our notion of reality in a meaningful way.

In the early
1700s, the philosopher George Berkeley argued that the world is merely an
illusion. Dismissing the idea, the ebullient English writer Samuel Johnson
exclaimed “I refute it thus” – and kicked a stone.

Johnson did
not really refute anything. But he may nevertheless have come up with the right
response.

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3 comments:

We don't live in a computer simulation. We have just allowed genetic psychopaths to take over, and this latest BS propaganda is just another method of attacking the human spirit.The "computer simulation" theory is nonsense such as touted by the likes of leading transhumanist Ray Kurtzweil. You might as well join the cloud, and allow the gov. to put chips in your brain, since afterall, we are merely cogs in the machine.

Internally consistent logical postulates deserve to be debated (and the articles deserve to be read before being commented upon) - if only that they can be proven incorrect by a similar level of analysis.

While it's true that the simulated universe hypothesis dovetails alarmingly with transhumanist views, they both suffer from the same malaise as abrahamism - the sick notion that the world is unreal, disposable and replaceable, along with the beings that dwell herein.

Whatever one's views of Maya and Samskara, this planet and its myriad denizens need far more respect and nurture than they've been receiving from homo sap.

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